


Languages

by waterscroll



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: Blood Kink, Cunnilingus, F/M, Post-Canon, Sanan route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 04:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16591262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterscroll/pseuds/waterscroll
Summary: No one can tell her how much of herself she can give. Sanan/Chizuru in Europe, post-route.





	Languages

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't yet found in the fandom any Sanan/Chizuru post-route fic and I needed some.
> 
> The idea that Chizuru is good at teaching herself languages (and Sanan isn't) is from the Sanan DLC in Edo Blossoms. It seems that this would matter a lot once they get to Europe.

On the long journey to the strange land of Europe, Chizuru works every night over the French and German books she’s managed to acquire. These languages aren’t so different from Dutch - well, they are, but they have some things in common. Sanan meanwhile is baffled by the entire process. She’s given him her old Dutch books, the basic ones from when she was a child, but he can’t get more than a few phrases. Finally he just watches her as she trips her way through unfamiliar conjugations. “You are preparing me a gift,” he says at last. “A gift from my lady wife.”

They aren’t married, not in any formal sense. He offered, of course, as soon as they were out of her father’s prison. But it was a meaningless offer, and she didn’t want it. She’s not human and he’s not a demon, or a human, or anything else previously known. There is no magistrate on earth that could marry them and no contract on earth that could bind them. “I belong to you,” she says, as she has always said since their early days together. “My body is yours.” Nothing in this world can tell her what of herself she can and can’t give.

Three weeks later they meet a clan of French vampire. Before they know it they’re pressed up against strange brick walls, daggers in each of their faces. Sanan reaches for his sword and Chizuru knows that he could take them all out in a moment, but that’s not what they’re here for and she’s had blades in her face before. She thinks she can handle this so she gestures to him and he stills his hand from his sword. She gets the explanation out, in her slow, halting French, that Sanan is a vampire, sort of, and a scientist and is working on a cure. And that she is something else, a demon. They don’t know what a demon is so she bends forward and slices herself on a vampire’s dagger to let them taste her blood. She can’t tell Sanan not to be afraid, there isn’t time and she doesn’t want the vampires to hear them talking in a foreign language and worry that they’re plotting. She just has to hope he’ll trust her.

The vampires, as it turns out, don’t think they need saving. Their lifespans are not shortened. Rather the opposite, they can live for centuries, like a demon, as long as they are well fed. The thought of being able to endure daylight, though, is still appealing. Chizuru promises to send them some of whatever cure they find, and offers them the recipe for the medicine Sanan had developed. And then a trade: a vial of her blood for one of theirs. They agree, but, Chizuru thinks, not because they want the medicine. Maybe they just like to know that at the other end of the world there are people like them, people who need blood to live and only walk at night.

The negotiation takes time, but when they’re done the two of them are bundled into a carriage, taking them to another city where they will find a place to stay and laboratory space for Sanan’s experiments. She throws herself on him as soon as they are alone, and she can’t help it, she starts babbling. “I was so worried for you, and I was so afraid, but we did it…” She knows she was strong because of him, he’s always made her strong.

In a moment his arm is around her, holding her immobile, while his other hand slides over her mouth. She stills, instantly, transfixed by the man she loves. She looks at his face, fully, in a way she hasn’t since they encountered the vampires. He’s beautiful, he’s always been beautiful, but there’s something new, a new kind of peace. “To trust you, completely, with my life, as you have trusted me,” he whispers, his voice a caress in her intimate places. “I am grateful for the gift.”

The next day they’re working in a French laboratory run by a friend of a friend of a vampire. There’s a young woman scientist there and Chizuru wants to sit at talk with her, but there isn’t time and the woman - her name is Jehane - seems to be in a bit of a hurry herself. She explains the laboratory setup to Chizuru and this time, fortunately, she is able to translate sentence by sentence for Sanan and to relay back his questions. Then they get to work. There is no time to spare. Heisuke is, as far as they know, still alive, as are most of the Shinsengumi furies. They are Sanan’s people. Together with her father, he made them what they are.

In this room she’s an assistant. Sanan gives clear, specific orders and Chizuru follows them. She knows he’s training her so that she can continue his research if his Fury body turns to ash. She thinks he’s flattering her by imagining that his death is something she could survive. In any case the work of combining solutions doesn’t make sense to her, not like languages do, she pays attention but still can’t guess what stroke of brilliance causes him to put one amount of something into a vial with something else. Finally he puts something together and, lacking other test subjects, Sanan orders Chizuru to inject it in his arm.

The laboratory they’re in is half a world away from her father’s in the home where Chizuru lived as a child, and they look nothing alike. In her father’s laboratory, when Chizuru was a young child, he’d sometimes give her tasks. She’d return there, over and over, because it was a place she knew her father was, a place where she knew she could be of use to him.  He was working on a weapon, something that would help the Shogun, something that would protect Japan. It was a serum, something you could swallow. He gave her tasks to help him develop it. He never swallowed it himself.

“You’re thinking about your father,” Sanan says, because of course he knows, of course she’s told him the stories. His free hand grabs her chin.

“I just want to do better,” she says, feeling frail and small and overwhelmed by memories. She just wants to do good, for all the harm that they have done.

“I won’t leave you behind,” he says, and maybe that’s enough, to know that whatever they do they will face together. They’re trying to do the right thing now, and Sanan has always been kind. She slides the needle under his skin. He shakes, convulses, then is silent for a moment, but before Chizuru can panic he opens his eyes.

It helps a little, the new injection. The sunlight is still harsh but somewhat more bearable. They send the recipe to Heisuke and hope he can figure out how to replicate it.

The next day they’re in a carriage again, on their way to a spring with rumored properties of healing. The French said they had seen there one of their gods, a woman who had given birth while a virgin, and she had promised life to all who drink of it. France has no demons, only vampires, so perhaps demon powers in France belongs to gods and springs like these. It’s worth an experiment.

The carriage is their refuge from the urgency of their work, a place where they can take time to enjoy their home in each other. He presses her down on the wooden bench, his hand up her strange, voluminous foreign skirts. She craves his touch and gasps when he flicks against her folds. She’s wet, so wet, but he inhales her scent and she knows that he knows that it’s not just arousal. Through the carriage window she can see the moon, just thicker than a crescent, and knows it’s the time when her body opens for him. He slides one finger into her, then brings it up to trail a line of blood across her cheek. It would have shamed her, once, but neither of them are human and there can’t be human shame in anything they can do together. “Please take me,” she says, because he likes to hear it. His lips are on her cheek, licking away the stripe of blood. Then he pushes up her skirts, exposing her, and moves his mouth to taste her.

His tongue is sweet, and skilled, as he feeds from her most intimate, most secret places. She feels her blood flowing through his body, giving him life as he dips and licks and teases and soothes. The cramping which had bothered her for years transforms, under his touch, to pure sensation, pain accentuating the pleasure. He holds her in his mouth as she releases, keeps holding her through her climax, then drinks his fill of her until he is sated. Then he kisses her, mouth still stained with her blood, so she can share the taste.

It’s strange, Chizuru thinks, how free she’s come to feel, how safe she knows she is with this man. How mysterious the alchemy between pleasure and pain and strength and submission and curiosity and absolute trust. She doesn’t think she could blend it in any laboratory. She thinks Sanan can. “My body is yours,” she whispers. No one can tell her how much of herself she can give. She presses herself against him and feels his arms wrap around her, holding her warm and safe and close.


End file.
